MN Blog Cabin Roundup, 10/10

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Now, Governor Dayton isn’t into experiments, but he has moved forward with a progressive view on legislation. He increased taxes on the wealthy, increased funding to public schools, has all-day kindergarten, and accepted the Federal Medicaid expansion. Increased the minimum wage, above and beyond the Federal minimum. Although, he had a more tempered approach, his agenda still looked like a mirror image of the Brownback “experiment”.

If you’re going to raise $650 million in revenue on 2.4 billion gallons sold, that works out to be about $0.27 or $0.28 a gallon. That would be on top of the current gas tax in Minnesota, which is now $0.286 per gallon. So, essentially you’d be looking at doubling the gas tax in Minnesota. Add the current gas federal gas tax of $0.184 per gallon, and you are talking about an effective tax rate of $0.71 per gallon in Minnesota. That’s 71 cents for every gallon of gas you put in your vehicle.

Navigating the health insurance tangle

On her blog News Day, Mary Turck has put together a series of posts about the workings of health insurance in Minnesota:

A conspiracist might say that they want their bikeshare system to fail. They’ll get all kinds of great PR for implementing such a healthy and green initiative. And then they’ll be able to show how ineffective bikeshare is. I can hear the quotes from GM now “We tried very hard but people just don’t want to ride bicycles.”

We all know we’re not supposed to spend nine hours a day sitting. It’s not good for our bodies, and yet many of us can’t avoid it. We commute to work, seated in our car or on a bus or train, and sit down at our desk at 8:55 in the morning — barely moving until 5 p.m. We give our blood nine to 10 hours to pool in our legs and spend the day burning little to no calories.

And yet, what’s the alternative? Maybe you work in an office savvy enough to provide standing desks, but that’s a pretty drastic lifestyle change, and standing all day has its own repercussions. Ultimately, any movement can be good movement if you commit to doing it daily. Find some activities you can groove to and make a plan to stick with them.

Nadella even went as far as to say that women who don’t ask for raises have “good karma” and that not asking for equal pay with men is a “superpower.” Obviously knowing the position Nadella has worked his way into over the course of his career, we all know he took personal measures to advance his career… including asking for raises. Nadella did apologize via Twitter (even though it probably was not the best apology), but the comments re-energized conversation about women in business, and how we can close pay and position gaps where they exist.